Stephen Sondheim in Conversation at Williams College

By Clarence Fanto

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. January 24, 2010) — Only five minutes into his intimate conversation with New York Times columnist and former theater critic Frank Rich at Chapin Hall Saturday evening, one of Williams College's most renowned and accomplished graduates choked up and came close to tears.

Master of musical theater Stephen Sondheim, class of 1950, was responding to Rich's simple question: "What did you learn here?" "The answer is very sentimental," he explained after regaining his composure. "Williams changed my life. I get very emotional about this." He cited academic mentors such as Robert G. Barrow of the music department — "a complete, unromantic teacher."

Sondheim, 79, recalled Barrow's explanation of Debussy's La Mer — "it's not about the sea, this is about the whole-tone scale. With Barrett's lectures, I realized what art is about. It's about structure, conscious effort, it's not about sitting in a penthouse." Sondheim added that his 1984 show, Sunday in the Park with George was about "how hard it is to make art."

Before a capacity crowd of 1,100 rapt listeners, Rich engaged Sondheim in a lively, candid, wide-ranging 90-minute discussion covering his six-decade life in the theater.
 

He recounted his visits with theater icon Cole Porter, then living near the Williams campus, and offered anecdotes about his work with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, his professional mentor, beginning with his service as a "go-fer" during the preparation of the show "Allegro," one of the rare Rodgers & Hammerstein flops. "Oscar, to the day he died, always wanted to fix 'Allegro,' Sondheim said.

Other revelations and insights:

--The then-experimental, ground-breaking West Side Story encountered difficulties finding a producer to invest in the classic that featured Leonard Bernstein's music, Sondheim's lyrics (he was 25 at the time), and Jerome Robbins's choreography. Eventually, after hearing a few of the songs, Harold "Hal" Prince took on the show, which was mounted in three months and encountered mixed reviews, initially-bewildered audiences and a dearth of awards because it was up against The Music Man.

--During a recent bi-lingual revival of West Side Story on Broadway, playwright-librettist Arthur Laurents dropped his innovative, bi-lingual reworking three months into the run in favor of a traditional remounting since many theatergoers were "baffled" because they were unfamiliar with the show. "An entire generation had no knowledge of West Side Story, and therefore were confused," Sondheim observed with amazement.

--Lorenz "Larry" Hart was  "such a sloppy, lazy writer" whose lyrics contained "misplaced emphases and accents, some things that made no sense, syntactical reversals" and other flaws. "A guy who could write really good stuff, with wit and mood to it, should have worked harder," Sondheim insisted, listing half a dozen amusing examples. He also took Hammerstein to task for a few blunders — "it was Oscar himself who taught me to treat each word preciously, because there are so few words in a lyric that you cannot afford to be sloppy." Perfect lyric writers, according to Sondheim, included Frank Loesser, 'Yip' Harburg, Jerry Herman and Sheldon Harnick — "they may have other faults, but they're not sloppy!"

--Summing up his approach to lyric-writing: "If you're going to write a conversational lyric, make it the way people talk, and it takes a lot of sweat to do that. The idea of poetry is a packed form, concision, density, but the idea of lyrics is to spread them out, because music is so rich, you cannot compact the words. You have to give them air." But there are examples of poetry set to music, such the lyrics of "Summertime" by DuBose Heyward, whose novel Porgy became a non-musical play and, later, the basis for Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess.

---"I learned a huge amount from Bernstein, both in terms of being less square — I'm by nature very square — he taught me to be less square musically, and also, courage. Lenny was never afraid of making big mistakes; he never fell off the first rung of the ladder, he always fell off the highest."

---Most musicals have not been successfully transferred to film; "There's only one movie that's ever done that successfully, I don't think it worked with Fiddler, Funny Girl or My Fair Lady — they're still films of stage plays. The one person who had the sensibility to know the difference and make it work was Tim Burton in Sweeney Todd, he really made it into a movie. That's very hard to do."

---Sweeney Todd, which shocked adult audiences 30 years ago, is now performed in schools — "it's such fun, a wonderful story, mostly it's about a sophisticated use of music, so it's very good for teaching. Maybe time goes by..."

---Company, among Sondheim's most-enduring shows, encountered hostility from critics when it opened in 1970. Why? "It's a very smart show, and those are not very good with critics," he quipped to uproarious laughter and hearty applause. "You're the exception, Frank, that's why you're here."

---In answer to a question on how a song is written, Sondheim explained that a discussion with the librettist comes first. "The first thing you decide is whether music is necessary, because music can decorate anything, like raisins in a cake, but is it really necessary? My Fair Lady is a very good show, but does Pygmalion really need songs? I don't know." Once the decision to use music for a scene is made, "the librettist always writes the scenes before I write the songs, though I might have musical ideas. I have to know the diction of the characters and know exactly who the characters are and what motivates them, what kind of people they are. Then it's a matter of finding the central idea of a song...All lyrics are difficult to write. It's painful, terrible!"

---The state of the commercial musical theater today makes it very difficult for young writers with anything to say to be heard — "young writers don't get a chance to develop their skills." Sondheim recalled that Rodgers and Hammerstein sometimes had two Broadway shows running in the same year. "In my generation, we were lucky to get a show on every two years and we thought it was so great back then. Now, you're lucky to get a show on once in a decade, in a professional production. You can't judge your own work unless it's done well in front of a paying audience." In the end, Sondheim advised, "put it on any place and hope that someone will pick it up and give you a chance to do it again, or to do another show, but you have to get things out. It needs exposure, because you're in a public profession."

As a final observation, Sondheim responded to a question about his reaction to critical and audience rejection of some shows. "The only thing that upset me was that the show didn't run long enough for my friends to see it. That's a nice, healthy reaction. I wasn't starving, having had some successes with money coming in. There's always somebody who says, 'Let's do another show.' So, there's never a black wall. You're never alone!"

Contributing editor Clarence Fanto reviews music for Berkshire Living.